


All But the Page Prescribed

by TheLastGoodGoldfish



Series: LoVe AU Week [1]
Category: Veronica Mars (TV), Veronica Mars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, F/M, LV AU WEEK
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-17
Updated: 2018-03-17
Packaged: 2019-04-01 12:04:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13997952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLastGoodGoldfish/pseuds/TheLastGoodGoldfish
Summary: Neptune's a mean town, and nobody's meaner than Veronica.LoVe AU Week - Day #4 - Role Reversal





	All But the Page Prescribed

Veronica used to marvel at Lilly and how she did it—how she ran the school with such effortless efficiency, that the barest hint of her every whim was as good as law. One minute, some new kid was eating lunch alone, and the next, he was the most popular guy in the class, just because Lilly deigned to talk to him. Yolanda Hamilton was exiled from every decent group in school, simply because Lilly Kane decided it would be so.

For the longest time, Veronica had been in awe of Lilly’s power over their peers.

As it turns out, running things is pretty easy.

Maybe because her father’s the most powerful person in town or because her brother is a star athlete, homecoming king material if there ever was such a thing. Maybe it’s the _Freak_ aspect of being the younger sister of Neptune’s Most Famous Dead Girl, or the fact that, at the end of the day, Veronica is a pretty rich white blonde, and the world’s her damn oyster. Whatever the reason, Veronica’s ascendancy to the top of the 09er food chain was easy and unchallenged.

And, truth be told, kind of boring.

Maybe that’s why Lilly was always chasing a new thrill.

(Everyone always said the thrill-seeking would get Lilly into trouble one day: kind of ironic that what really got her into trouble was some random disgruntled ex-employee with an ashtray and a grudge against their beloved dad.)

So maybe it should bother Veronica more that, while every other over-moneyed douchebag and sycophant in Neptune does her bidding without question—or else, can be easily manipulated into bending to her will—Logan Echolls never seems to give a damn about what she wants.

 _Jesus Christ._ Caitlin Ford transferred _schools_ just because Veronica banned her from the lunch table _:_ Veronica’s done everything but order a hit on Echolls, and he _still_ shows up to school every day in his thrift shop leather jacket, smacking gum in the back of the classroom.

It _did_ bother her at first. Ms. James or one of the three therapists her parents made her see would call this _misplaced aggression_ , but Veronica called it Good Old-Fashioned Biblical Justice. Logan Echolls went against her and against her family—he betrayed her sister before Lilly was cold in the ground, and he would be made to pay.

He did—for a while.

There were a dozen 09er guys ready and willing to beat the shit out of him whenever they managed to catch him alone... better yet, it was never too difficult to lure him into a fight with one or two well-aimed comments about his washed up boozy mother, or the dad who couldn't be bothered to sign the child-support checks. Usually that was enough to start Logan swinging.

There were other things, too, that Veronica isn't exactly proud of. Things she said about him, things she let other people say about him—truth and fiction, rumors and whispers and slurs, all mixed up together, because there wasn’t much people wouldn’t believe about the fallen Hollywood royalty.

“Veronica— _go_.”

—This from Duncan in the passenger seat of her Audi, and Veronica realizes that the Beamer to their right is letting her merge in front of them. She’s jolted from her bitter reverie and accelerates into the parking lot intersection, only to find herself in the interminable queue at the red light. “Geez,” says Duncan, “You looked like you’re hypnotized or something.”

Which is a bit rich coming from the King of the Zombies, but Veronica lets it slide. Duncan isn’t what she would call _perceptive_ , but he’s not an idiot, and there’s no point in cluing him in on the fact that she was staring across the parking lot at Logan Echolls of all people.

He’s walking to his car, Logan is, maybe twenty yards away, head inclined as he punches buttons on his cell phone. He must not be too concerned about an attack, although Dick and the other 09ers have stepped off recently—maybe Logan dug up dirt for them, maybe they got tired of a target that fights back.

Veronica will say this for him: he’s handled his declined social status in an unconventional way. Some of it’s to be expected, of course. He’s dropped the 09er Surfer Boy look. Gone are the puka shells and highlights of Freshman year. He wears a plain dark shirt today, long sleeves pushed up nearly to his elbows, and jeans. His hair’s shorter, buzzed almost, so at least he didn’t go full burn-out and grow out a pony tail, start wearing unwashed trench coats. _Not that Veronica cares. Not that she cares if Logan Echolls lives or dies._

He doesn’t even react anymore, though. She’s never heard him _deny_ any of the things people say about him, but then again he wouldn’t, that’s not him at all, but you used to be able to taunt a fight out of him. Get him to flinch, see the muscle in his jaw clench. Now it’s just… nothing. A sarcastic comeback, if you're lucky.

“God, this is taking forever,” Duncan complains, so he must not have noticed his sister’s staring. The school lot is always a nightmare at this time of day, and though Veronica’s on the final stretch, it’ll be another five minutes before they’re out onto the main street. Anyway, what's Duncan in a big rush to get home to... an empty house? Dad'll be at work, and Mom... well, if Veronica knew where her mom was, that would be half her problems solved, wouldn't it?

Duncan glowers nonetheless, as though traffic isn’t an everyday occurrence that he should be accustomed to by now. “I’m supposed to meet Meg,” is his explanation, when Veronica points it out.

(Probably a lie. Meg’s babysitting this afternoon, which means Duncan’s hiding something. Not surprising, really, it seems like everyone's hiding something these days, and Veronica hates her brother for it, and she hates herself for not being angry or surprised.)

Not far off, Logan’s almost reached his car, a well-used SUV left in the shitty part of the parking lot, likely a strategy to avoid slashed tires. He stops walking and slides his phone into the pocket of his jeans, then squints up in the sunlight, looks around like he’s expecting someone.

He didn’t have a car when they were still friends, and Veronica realizes that she’s never seen the inside of it. Not that it matters or anything, not that she cares, but once upon a time, he was one of her closest friends and now he’s basically a stranger. She doesn’t even have his cell phone number.

—She can practically hear the joke that Dick Casablancas would make in response to that: _you can find it on the wall in any public men's room,_  and her stomach churns uncomfortably.

The feeling isn’t guilt (she tells herself). It’s the inconvenience of the thing... that she should need Logan Echolls’s help, when he’s the only person in her world that might plausibly say _no_.

And that _should_ bother her, is the point, but instead it kind of thrills her.

 

* * *

  

Logan calls him “Sheriff” because no other title seems to suit. “Mr. Mars” is too formal, makes him sound like a history teacher, and “Keith” is too relaxed, considering this is the man that Vice Principal Clemmons calls whenever Logan gets into a fight at school.

(They make nominal attempts to reach his mom, but even when they _do_ manage to get a hold of her, she’s only going to call the Sheriff and ask him to go down to the school for her anyway.)

So Logan calls him “Sheriff,” though the title hasn’t been technically accurate for over a year now.

The habit does seem to confuse Mrs. Braun, when Logan saunters into Mars Investigations at a few minutes after six, bearing a laden bag of takeout from Luigi’s as he announces, “Dinner’s here, Sheriff.”

To an outsider, the moniker might appear sarcastic—doubtless that’s how Mrs. Braun reads it—but the Sheriff knows better.

Mrs. Braun is on her way out anyway, and she eyes Logan with the utmost suspicion as she disappears through the front door. Keith just looks amused, resigned, and faintly irritated—his usual reaction to Logan's antics, at this point it's expected. Logan sets down the paper bag on the reception desk.

“I thought you were off today,” says Keith, wandering over to examine the contents of the bag, because of course he hasn't eaten. Logan just starts clearing off the desk.

His mom’s not home tonight—in L.A., pursuing a lead on a job they both know won’t pan out—and he thought he’d drop in to do some filing anyway. It only made sense to bring Italian.

“What?” says Logan, rather than explaining: “You got a hot date or something?”

“Yeah, at the Camelot,” says Keith with a snort. Logan’s been working here long enough to know that a date at the Camelot means Keith’s got a stake-out scheduled. “But,” the Sheriff goes on, “I thought we agreed you’d only work three days a week so your grades don’t suffer.”

Logan drops into the chair on the other side of the desk, selects his take-out container, and shrugs, non-committal. “My grades suffer worse when I don’t work. I only do homework when I’m on the clock here, you should know that. Parm?” He holds up the sealed plastic cup of Parmesan, and Keith takes it, shaking his head.

“You know you should be doing _normal_ kid stuff, too...”

“I’m almost afraid to ask what you think that _is_."

“...Join a club, try out for a sport or something,” the Sheriff speaks over him, and Logan shudders.

“Jocks don’t like me.”

“What about that girl you were dating? The one you helped with that—class election thing? She seemed nice.”

“I wouldn’t call it ‘dating,’ and she tried to narc on me for drug possession, so...” Keith freezes halfway through parm-ing up his lasagna, and Logan pulls an earnest expression: “But if you think I should call her...?”

Keith rolls his eyes. “You know what I mean. You should try to make friends...”

“I have friends.”

“Friends who aren’t in motorcycle gangs.”

“I have _a_ friend.”

Logan leans back in his chair, throws his feet over the empty corner of the desk—his _de facto_ post three (more honestly, five) days a week, when he mans the front room at Mars Investigations. It’s not the most conventional of after school jobs, and he mostly took it on to help Keith, but the position has grown on him... especially the questionably sanctioned cases he picks up on the side. Besides, it’s not like anybody else seemed interested in lending a hand to the disgraced former sheriff, after Jake Kane ran him out of office.

Jake, after all, is the town hero. He turned half of Neptune into millionaires, himself a billionaire, and invented the technology that would enable millions of people to stream porn. His best friend is a movie star and his wife is his high school sweetheart—he’s somehow made halcyon domesticity glamorous: a modern American hero. 

Logan imagines that Lilly, who had an eye for these kind of things, would point out that her father could hardly have been all that heroic a few years back, given that he managed to father a son and a daughter by different women within months of each other, but the soap opera of yesteryear has long since been forgotten, left in the past by Jake's infallible P.R. department. People wanted him to be a good guy, and they were more than willing to cast Keith as the villain.

When the Sheriff’s department first started looking into Lilly’s father and step-mother, the Kanes issued what amounted to a mandate that no one in their circle would talk to the cops. Logan, being the victim’s ex, was asked to give statements, and the fact that he talked to Keith at all—rather than hiding behind the Kanes’ expensive lawyer—was enough to land him on Veronica Kane’s kill list.

—One of the many reasons that Logan doesn’t consider himself a _joiner_.

He’d never really believed that the punishment for “betraying” the Kane family would be so severe or permanent, but Logan can’t say he’d choose differently. Keith Mars was the only grown-up who ever had the nerve to stand up to Logan’s dad, and without him, Logan and his mom would still be living in that house of nightmares.

“I’m just concerned that you’re not enjoying your youth as much as you should be,” Keith resumes his lecture, all paternal and knowing, which is ironic, as the Sheriff’s a childless bachelor. Then again, biological paternity never gave Aaron any decent parental instincts, so maybe that’s not how it works.

“I have nothing _but_ fun,” Logan replies, over a bite of pasta. “Just today, the Vice Principal blackmailed me into tracking down a stolen parrot. I’m practically the star of my own comic strip.”

Keith props an elbow on the desk and gestures with his plastic fork. “You know, I'm worried about the state of public education.”

“You _should_ be,” Logan tells him.

 

* * *

 

Logan spots the car parked across the street when he gets home that night. It's not the _worst_ neighborhood, but this zip code tends to run more pre-owned Toyota than brand new Audi, so the shiny black sedan stands out. He’s half tempted to do something about it. Call the cops, maybe, report a suspicious vehicle.

Then again, it’s always a gamble calling Lamb's department these days, and they’re more likely to arrest him than the driver of that, or any other, luxury car. So he lets himself into the house and fatalistically accepts whatever lies in store for him tonight.

He likes to think they’ve reached a kind of détente, him and the Kanes. Him and Veronica, really: Duncan was never really a part of this war. Duncan’s been in a haze since Lilly, and if he hasn’t done anything to _defend_ his former friend, he hasn’t gone out of his way to antagonize Logan, either.

Not so for Veronica.

Their truce doesn’t so much mean that they’re braiding friendship bracelets or that the promise of a late night visit isn’t slightly terrifying, but she’s eased off in the last few months. Confined the scornful comments to disparagement of his clothes and his car, rather than his mother. So that’s something.

Veronica's changed so much from the sweet Ronnie Kane that he knew and loved before Lilly died. Clever and energetic with a sharp sense of humor, a breath of cool, refreshing air, paired perfectly with her sister's unfailing light. She played soccer and volleyball and ran track, was involved in everything, _interested_ in everything. Now she doesn’t seem to do much at all, except brood and taunt and snark from the periphery, looking admittedly hotter than she has any right to in those damn mini skirts.

Every school has an obligatory cold-hearted bitch, and she’s Neptune’s.

Logan’s put away his things and mostly tidied the kitchen before her knock taps out against the front door.

She’s waiting for him on the porch, arms clutching a jacket around her middle to stave off the chill in the air. Whatever he was expecting, Logan realizes it wasn’t this. She’s not here to fight; she’s guarded, but there’s a vulnerability in the way she locks her eyes with his, in the sincere set of her mouth. No fight, no jab perfectly crafted to wound: instead, determination and honesty, and it nearly knocks the wind out of him.

“Veronica," he begins when she offers no clues. "What are you doing here?”

She swallows thickly, but doesn’t break eye contact, doesn’t waver at all. Gets right to the point: “I want you to help me find my mom.”

**Author's Note:**

> I am sure that this has been done before, and probably better, but I saw the prompt and could not resist writing a little something for it.


End file.
